Moon Stalked

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The branch snapped beneath my feet. The wolf pelt that had been loosely wrapped around my neck billowed out as I fell.

Grab my escaping pelt or scrabble for a handhold?

I hit the ground on my back, air knocked out of my lungs but pelt cradled to my chest. For one long moment, all I could do was lie there and listen to the night.

At first, the signs were good. Crickets chirped. A car honked in the distance.

Then night critters fell silent. Closer than should have been possible, a canine growled.

I winced. A full day of scouting and we’d missed a guard dog. How was that even possible?

While I struggled to pull myself together, the timbre of the growl deepened. Footsteps padded closer.

Soon the dog would see me and bark a warning to its owners. Lights would flicker on in the household I was burgling. My one shot at redeeming my name would be lost.

“Mission aborted,” I muttered to myself. “Time to regroup and try again tomorrow.”

Easing my way to my feet, I started stripping. If one of the Smythewhites looked out a window to check on Spot, I didn’t want them to see anything two-legged. Shoes, socks, pants....

Someone laughed so close by I could have reached out and touched him. “Wardrobe malfunction?”

I leapt a foot sideways, my pelt slipping off my arm the way it had a habit of doing. As if my lupine nature wasn’t entirely quiescent when shed into a leathery skin. As if its wishes trumped my own.

Now, the pesky skin slid down to land on the grass between us. And before I could snatch it back up, the stranger’s hand slid across my discarded fur.

A ghost caress ran up the full length of my spine. My breath caught in my throat. It had been years since anyone touched my pelt.

The stranger’s voice was deep and smooth, like water against river rocks. “What’s this?”

“It’s....” I shook my head, unable to believe I’d almost answered. It’s what woelfin use for transformation. It’s the other half of my self, my most precious possession.

It’s the memory of my worst lapse of judgement. The only way to correct a decade-old mistake.

I cleared my throat and went on the offensive. “It’s mine. Give it back.”

Unfortunately, no pelt appeared in my peripheral vision. Even when I remembered my humanity and tacked on a modifier:

“Please.”

Instead, a ghost thumb blazed a semicircle behind my left earlobe. Well, behind my pelt’s left earlobe. The stranger was teasing his fingers through my shed fur. Stroking gently, curiously. Was that good news or bad?

His reply, when it came, rumbled through my belly like a drumbeat. “Look at me.”

My eyes remained riveted on the ground, fixed on the dandelion down caught in my right-most toe cleft. I’d learned the hard way that non-woelfin were spooked by amber irises. I shook my head rather than obey him.

We were at an impasse. Silence lengthened. Crickets restarted. There was no traffic.

Eventually, I rounded my shoulders and mumbled an explanation at my toenails. “I’m sorry. I thought this was a park, not private property.”

“And the ten-foot-high fence?”

I couldn’t help myself. My mouth quirked sideways. “To keep out zombie giraffes.”

***

HE LAUGHED, THE SOUND rich and enticing. I felt rather than saw as his whole hand massaged my pelt this time. My human neck turned jelly-soft beneath the caress.

His words tensed me back up in short order. “Do you need help?”

Of course I needed help. My cousin was dying. I craved a time machine. Or perhaps a way to break into the vast, dark house before me and steal back what didn’t rightfully belong to the people inside.

What I had was a man dropping down to kneel so close I was finally forced to look at him. His eyes were the stormy blue of a sunlit ocean. His dark curls had tousled free of any civilized arrangement. His shirt was misbuttoned, as if he’d seen me lurking in the shadows and half-dressed before rushing over to hunt me down.

“Is this your home?” Words tumbled out before I could stop them.

He shook his head. “Yours?”

“Heh. No.” The hem of my t-shirt was ragged and holey. The house—almost a mansion—was extravagant. The fact this stranger could even ask that question proved he was either delusional or kind.

He stared into my eyes, not flinching at their color. “Here.”

My pelt lay atop his hands, halfway between us. For one insane instant, I imagined leaving it there. His touch was blissful. The unfamiliar intimacy was gut-wrenching.

Instead, I asked the most relevant question in the face of this overwhelming attraction: “Do you have a twin?”

His brows drew together, but he didn’t request further explanation. Just shook his head and dashed the hope sparking in my belly.

“No.”

“Ah, well, then.” I turned away. If he didn’t have a twin, he wasn’t for me.

Snatching my pelt out of the stranger’s lax fingers, I grabbed up jeans, shoes, and socks in one hurried gesture. I was halfway to the fence, plotting my escape route when he called after me.

“My name is Luke.”

A low-hanging limb assisted my ascent. Scrambling across the scrap of carpet I’d lugged along to shield against razor wire, my bare ankle nonetheless snagged on a protruding point.

An inhaled breath from below. I glanced down in time to see the man—Luke—catch a droplet of my blood in his outstretched fingers.

“Clothes,” he suggested. “They’re for wearing.”

I shrugged, shoving off the carpet then grabbing one corner to take the square with me. Down, down, down. I landed on the sidewalk on two bent legs.

Straightening, I found myself eye to eye with Luke, nothing but air and fence between us. In the seconds I’d been busy, he’d lowered himself to perch on the edge of a concrete planter. Despite the fact I’d used perfect plummeting posture this time, my lungs felt as windstruck as when I’d landed on my back a few moments before.

Luke was tall and broad but not muscle-bound. The veins on his hands stood out even in the shadows. He was strength and power incarnate.

He was also patient. His head c****d but he didn’t request my identity a second time.

Perhaps that’s why I gave it to him.

“Honor. I’m Honor, master zombie-giraffe hunter.”

Then, without allowing myself another moment for banter, I turned to flee from the home I’d hoped to burglarize in an attempt to regain the right to use my name.